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Saturday, April 23, 2011

Some of you may remember that last month I embarrassed myself via email before a customer service representative of a clothing company. I blogged about it, and you can read the initial post if you like, but the long and short of it is that I meant to sign an email “Best, Drew Mackie,” but due to workplace conversation happening around me, I accidentally wrote “Duckface, Drew Mackie.” I’d hoped that I wouldn’t have to contact this woman again, but this has not been the case.

When I eventually did receive the ordered item of clothing — a bathing suit — I found that the company had sent me someone else’s order: his name and address inside the package, as well as his bathing suit. I wrote back, explaining the situation, and the woman — let’s call her Camilla — told me that she would send out a return shipping label so I could send the item back free of charge. Now here is where I fucked up again: I had intended to simply email her back thanking her for her help, but I was attempting to do so on my iPhone and instead shot her back an email that contained only the cute email signature I use on iPhone emails to explain away typos: “Excuse brevity. I have fat fingers and typing on an Iphone is difficult.”

Just that. Which is weird.

I eventually clarified when I had meant to say, and she replied with the most gracious email that explained that due to my trouble she’d enclose a free pair of board shorts. And that’s great, in theory. Realistically, she might has well have told me she was enclosing a free falconer’s glove, because I’ve reached an age at which non-surfers can’t really pull off board shorts. But whatever, she understood that this had been a hardship, at least by “first world problem” standards.

Finally, this week, the package arrived. I felt relieved, mostly because I wouldn’t have to risk embarrassing myself in front of Camilla anymore. Then I tried the bathing suit on. It was too small. Since we’ve already established that I make myself seem and feel like an idiot underserving of human affecttion, I have no problem expressing to you readers the shame one feels in trying on a too-small bathing suit. Have you ever done this? It’s the worst thing ever. Not only are you slipping it onto your pasty, doughy body — see, because you haven’t been swimming, because you lack a bathing suit, and are therefore pale and out-of-shape — but the garment being too small pinches your waist and causes an exaggerated flap of you to spill over the band. In short, you look like a fat dump. Then — then! — I tried on the board shorts, which were a size bigger. They fit okay, but did I mention that these were were flesh-toned? Even when they don’t squeeze your sides in a displeasing fashion, flesh-toned board shorts manage to make your skin look even more pasty but also give you the appearance of having shorts-shaped skin tags hanging down uniformly around your hips. They might as well have a malformed teeny peen and distended anus printed on the front and back, respectively. They looked that bad.

This all being said, I realized I needed to place an order for the larger-sized bathing suit. So I did, and notably I did so without saying anything mortifying to Camilla. She gave the the address I’d need to send it — at this point in a more-than-month-long process, I didn’t want to wait for a return label — and today I mailed it off, hoping to end this exchange once and for all.

But then I wrote what I hope will be the final email, explaining what size I want in exchange for the too-small trunks, And for some reason, perhaps because I felt I had nothing to lose socially or perhaps because I at this point wondered how Camilla might respond to my weirdness, closed off the letter with the following sentence: “Apologies again for the lengthy exchange of emails, but I appreciate that I've had someone to share this long journey with.”

We shall see how she responds. And we shall also see if Camilla eventually sends me my fucking bathing suit.